Some herbicides bearing acidic moieties are known to be highly effective and commercially important herbicides useful for combating the presence of a wide variety of unwanted vegetation, including agricultural weeds.
Since usually, such acidic herbicides have low solubility in water, they are applied as their derivatives such as metal salts or ammonium salts to enhance the solubility, or esters or amides to enhance movement into plant. For example, N-phosphonomethyl-glycine is formulated in commercial compositions in the form of a water-soluble salt. Herbicidal amine salts of N-phosphonomethylglycine are disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,799,758, 3,853,530, 4,140,513, 4,315,765, 4,405,531, 4,481,026, and 4,507,250. These salts are claimed to have uses as plant regulators, herbicides and defoliants. Many of these salts have the counter-cation to N-phosphonomethylglycine anion bearing relatively low molecular weight. Typical of such salts are alkali metal, for example sodium and potassium salts; ammonium salt; and numerous salts having an ammonium, sulfonium or sulfoxonium cation with 1-3 organic groups containing in total 1-6 carbon atoms, for example 2-propylammonium (isopropylammonium), ethanolammonium, ethylenediammonium, trimethylsulfonium or trimethylsulfoxonium.
Recent Patent WO 99/05914 reveals the herbicidal compositions promoting herbicidal effectiveness of exogeneous chemical substances. The compositions are the amphiphilic salts having anions of the parent exogeneous chemical substances and cations derived by protonation of one or more polyamine(s) or polyamine derivative(s) each having (a) at least two nitrogen-containing groups, of which a number n not less than 1 are amino groups that can be protonated to form cationic primary, secondary, or tertiary ammonium groups, and (b) at least one hydrocarbyl or acyl group having about 6 to 30 carbon atoms.